A Catalogue of Selected Rhetorical Devices Used in the Works of Edgar Allan Poe

LEFT-BRANCHING SENTENCE: see Zimmerman, "Versatility" (102-03).

LEITMOTIF: not a rhetorical term but worth mentioning here for its similarity to the rhetorical device epimone, which Lanham defines as the "Frequent [choral] repetition of a phrase or question, in order to dwell on a point..."(68). Some may consider the two terms synonymous. Epimone can be especially effective in oratory; preachers like to use it, too. "Leitmotif" refers to the frequent intentional repetition of a word, phrase, sentence or complex of images in a single work. A leitmotif can function to unify a work by reminding the reader of its earlier occurrences. Poe employs the device seven times in "Eleonora"; here are two instances:

Forrest gives this device as partial proof that Poe attempted to duplicate the "biblical" style sometimes. He then cites passages from "Silence" to show the refrain at work again, and concludes that "Poe's use of the refrain in prose is especially noteworthy because he spoke of it in one of his lectures as a thing restricted to poetry alone, and as commonly limited to lyric poetry ["The Philosophy of Composition"]. But where used by him and the biblical writers outside of poetry the writings are highly poetic and not infrequently lyrical" (93). The refrain, like other devices Forrest discusses, is not restricted solely to the Bible, however, and Forrest frequently commits the fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc ("after this, therefore because of this") in attempting to prove the Bible as a stylistic source of inspiration. Still, cumulatively he does make a good enough case, and anyone well familiar with Poe's prose should not have trouble accepting the Bible as one of his sources for rhetorical figures.

We had always dwelled together, beneath a tropical sun, in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass.... The passions which had for centuries distinguished our race, came thronging with the fancies for which they had been equally noted, and together breathed a delirious bliss over the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass. (4: 237, 239)

Indeed, Campbell believes that Poe read

some parts of it fairly closely. He quotes from the Bible, by my count, forty-five times; and he echoes passages from the Bible or alludes to persons or places or incidents mentioned in it seventy-four times. Thirty-one of his direct quotations are from the Old Testament and fourteen from the New Testament; and fifteen of the twenty-two Scriptural passages that he echoes are from the Old Testament. Most of his allusions, too, are to characters or places or happenings spoken of in the Old Testament. The books that he appears to have known best are Psalms, Isaiah, and Ezekiel in the Old Testament, and the Gospels of Matthew and John in the New Testament. He refers once to the Apocryphal book of Judith. (193)

I finally concluded that my senses were impressed by a certain air of gravity, sadness, or still more properly, of weariness.... ("The Spectacles" 5:183)

While this exemplification does not use a negative, the narrator is clearly qualifying an earlier statement to express it more accurately. Still, it is difficult to distinguish between metanoia and epanorthosis, sometimes called "correctic."